Guild Wars 2

While I can agree with some of the proposed changes (new Predator’s Instinct looks pretty good, Mighty Swap is change for the better and spirit nerfs are needed), they do nothing to improve ranger’s poor (active) condition removal.

I would like to suggest fusing Healer’s Celerity (and Trapper’s Defense) with Circle of Life.

• Circle of Life: Create a healing spring while reviving an ally. (30-60s cd). Increases revive speed by 10%

This would open up an adept trait slot in Wilderness Survival which could be used to give ranger more active condition removal. New adept WS trait suggestion:

• Symbiotic Bond: Convert a condition from you and your pet into a random boon (5-10s) when you break stun.

edit: changed WS suggestion to match what I originally had in mind.

SubAce.9863:

“Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.”

Please do not do this. I understand the thought process behind thinking that Rangers do have quite a bit of endurance regeneration. But as a class in general do Rangers really have too much of anything going on for them? This is a nerf that is not needed. The effect it will have on the few WvW running rangers I see could be substantially negative. I stopped running my ranger in zergs a long time ago. But for roaming I really do not want to see this. The effect it would have would just make me bummed.

They’re nerfing everybody’s passive endurance regeneration. Meaning we’re not the only ones getting hit with this.

Longbow is still a hindrance, no matter how you cut it in many game modes.

Marksman trait line has too many vital traits for someone who wants to make bows even remotely viable.

No attention still to sword auto-attack. Some may have grown to deal with it, but it can still be done better.

Nice up for greatsword; it’s nice to have a defensive power option.

Overall, I still think we need a few more considerations:

- A review of active condition removal
- Review of pretty much mandatory traits for bows, and consolidation
- Bow love, bow love, bow love!
- Mainhand Axe is still a weapon. What’s its role?

Change Signet of Wild to remove condition. Make a shout that has current signet of hunt ability but buffed up.

Taushullu.6180:

While I can agree with some of the proposed changes (new Predator’s Instinct looks pretty good, Mighty Swap is change for the better and spirit nerfs are needed), they do nothing to improve ranger’s poor (active) condition removal.

I would like to suggest fusing Healer’s Celerity (and Trapper’s Defense) with Circle of Life.

• Circle of Life: Create a healing spring while reviving an ally. (30-60s cd). Increases revive speed by 10%

This would open up an adept trait slot in Wilderness Survival which could be used to give ranger more active condition removal. New adept WS trait suggestion:

• Symbiotic Bond: Remove a condition from you and your pet when you break stun.

Thoughts?

ANET buffs brown bear and make healing spring pulse faster: users think ANET does nothing for ranger condition removal

Chopps.5047:

ANET buffs brown bear and make healing spring pulse faster: users think ANET does nothing for ranger condition removal

I didn’t mean it as Anet does nothing, just the proposed changes on dec 10 have nothing to do with condition cleansing. I may have worded that one badly.

And yes, I agree the changes to Healing Spring and brown bear’s Shake It Off do help. I’d just like to see the ranger to get to that point where we can drop and completely rework Emphatic Bond. That trait is just stupid strong for a passive trait and I think it’s sad so many ranger builds rely on it’s condition cleanse. (Or at least the builds I like to run). I may not have the right to complain (I never use brown bear afterall) but I think it’s nice to have different options for condition cleansing.

Figure I’ll go through and respond to each one of them.

Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.
Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.

These are actually good changes, and should make Longbow a bit more viable in comparison to Shortbow

Marksmanship V – Predator’s Instinct. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Increased the Cripple Duration from 2s to 10s. Increased the cooldown from 15s to 30s.

I don’t see this trait being used, 10 Second Cripple on a 30 Second Cooldown, I can maintain almost Perma Cripple already with Spiders and Intimidation Training. For everyone else 10% bonus damage with Endurance is always the better option….Hell Keen edges also for most builds…If it applied 2 or 3 Stacks of Torment with the Cripple It’d say it’d be an amazing Trait, problem then would be it overshadowing Keen Edges

Marksmanship VI – Beastmaster’s Bond. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.

This is another filler talent, No one is going to pick this ability as it simply doesn’t give enough to make it a choice over other things. You should simply scrap this trait entirely and add something else

Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.

Decent Change, I know why you did it, So you could make the Stuns on SB/GS 2 seconds instead of 1 second that it currently is (Right now Moment does nothing for those setups), Still wish it included Dazes hehehe…..

Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.

Nerf, but you’re changing everyone so I understand why its being nerfed

Wilderness VIII – Oakheart Salve. Decreased the recharge of this trait from 20s->15s

Won’t be used, Already to many good Traits, Offhand Training, Martial Mastery are pretty much required for most builds, the only build that wouldn’t use either of those two is a longbow/shortbow build and they’re generally not going to waste a trait on a crappy Regen they won’t get benefit from cause they won’t be specced Healing Power in the first place

Wilderness XII – Bark Skin Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 50%.

Great Change, This is more for PVE which is what I don’t think people get….Everyone serious about PvP will still use EB, though in PVE, making your pet be able to absorb more damage is a pretty nice change. EB is less required in PVE so you can give up the trait. However PvP it won’t be used most likely… EB is simply to important in fights, Simply watch my fights with Faux, Soon as his pet died, he died because he could do nothing against those Conditions.

Nature Magic I – Circle of Life. Cleared up the text of this trait to clearly identify that it happens when downed, not defeated.

I don’t know anyone who uses these traits. There seems to be far better picks, I’m thinking this is a PVE trait

Nature Magic V – Strength of Spirit. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%

Greatsword Valkyrie Burst Builds will love this i imagine

Nature Magic IX – Two Handed Training. Added the following functionality to this trait. Greatsword and Spear attacks have a chance to grant Fury on hit. 50% chance. 3s Fury. 10s cooldown.

This is for Cleric BM Builds I believe, as they lack crit with their current setup. could possibly be used with a GS Valkyrie Burst Build as well

Nature Magic X – Enlargement. This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allow it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.

Requires 50 Points to be useful, plus me getting to 25% life, Non Starter….Either Remove Signet of Beastmaster and give us full functionality of our Signets (which is holding them back currently) or bump this to 50% life and maybe it’ll be a bit better

Nature Magic VII – Nature’s Vengeance. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
Nature Magic XI – Spirits Unbound. Moved to Master Tier.

Decent Change, some people already mentioned Support Build you can do with this Setup. You’d have to drop SoTW though to run it, not sure much I agree with that.

Beastmastery VI – Mighty Swap. The might from this trait is now applied to you and your pet.

You’re basically giving me a free 100 more condition damage with this, So I thank ya..It’ll now be used 100% of the time

Sun Spirit. Reduced the passive burning from 3s to 2s.
Storm Spirit. Reduced the damage from the Call Lightning skill by 33%

Since the only place people run Spirits really is Tpvp, i understand these changes….Won’t matter anywhere else cause no one bothered in the first place

Chopps.5047:

Taushullu.6180:

While I can agree with some of the proposed changes (new Predator’s Instinct looks pretty good, Mighty Swap is change for the better and spirit nerfs are needed), they do nothing to improve ranger’s poor (active) condition removal.

I would like to suggest fusing Healer’s Celerity (and Trapper’s Defense) with Circle of Life.

• Circle of Life: Create a healing spring while reviving an ally. (30-60s cd). Increases revive speed by 10%

This would open up an adept trait slot in Wilderness Survival which could be used to give ranger more active condition removal. New adept WS trait suggestion:

• Symbiotic Bond: Remove a condition from you and your pet when you break stun.

Thoughts?

ANET buffs brown bear and make healing spring pulse faster: users think ANET does nothing for ranger condition removal

Chopps, Those two things will do absolutely nothing for you in terms of Condition Control.

the BB nerfs your damage, only removes 2 conditions every 20-25 seconds…

Healing Spring is counter intuitive for managing conditions as well, You want to use HS when you’re low on health, Not when you get a bunch of Conditions applied to you and you want to remove them….

more active condition removal …. MOAR

Ryan.8367:

Mesmer and guardian didnt get nerfs to endurance/vigor regeneration. But yea, it’s not a death of anything because we have to go 30 into WS anyway for any condition removal (still, no active removal anet? really?) so now it’s just ‘kind of a trait that is there’ as opposed to a benefit to the build.

I would have really liked to have seen like 2 conditions removed attached to heal as one, considering that heal barely gets any play at all.

Mesmer and guardian barely have access to it at all, that hasn’t changed any for them.

Heal as One is like HS without the cooldown, it’s underestimated. It’s really good for low healing power builds. If they added condition removal, it’d have to be conditional.

Healing Spring is pretty much mandatory for any kind of co-op play though and it accomplishes the same purpose for condition removal.

With Heal as One’s low cool down, if it was given an unrestricted condition removal, you’d see a lot less Healing Spring. Which is bad.

Our condition removal isn’t terrible. Healing Spring + SoR is pretty decent, SoR’s active AoE effect with that is really good when you’re melee or axe/shortbow.

This requires no investment.

Throw in Empathetic Bond and a brown bear with Commanding Voice and Signet Mastery and you have some of the best anti-condition in the game.

For you and your friends.

(And if you have all that AoE anti-condition and you’re still not helping your teammates, I have bad news; you suck. )

Chokolata.1870:

more active condition removal …. MOAR

I don’t know choko. What do we have to give up to get that? All of our endurance regen? Conditions are on the way out already. I think all of us would be better off to drop the issue for now.

Good job! you nerf our endurance regen then might as well remove stealth skills from thieves!! Now I can’t be a glass cannon kiter anymore XD

tiboi.3108:

Good job! you nerf our endurance regen then might as well remove stealth skills from thieves!! Now I can’t be a glass cannon kiter anymore XD

Funny you should mention that.

Thieves are going to eat one of the biggest stealth nerfs they’ve ever had with this coming patch, in addition to endurance regen nerfs.

With it, they’ll still be one of the most dodgiest characters in the game, and they’ll still be able to spam stealth moreso then any other.

Further, they’re going to regen initiative much faster then they do now, so, they’ll be able to spam even moar Backstab and Heartseeker on you.

If anything, you’ll be able to do exactly what you’re doing now, even better if you’re using the longbow for it.

Which is gonna be buffed some more to be used against thieves who won’t be able permastealth and permadodge like they can now.

Kain Francois.4328:

Nature Magic X – Enlargement. This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allow it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.

Too unreliable, but a step in the right direction. I would suggest making a more reliable way to trigger it, or increasing pet HP threshold. In its current state however, it’s too unreliable.

Overall though, although many of the changes are good in theory, most fail to fix the core issues with Ranger (pulling their own weight compared to other professions.)

You misunderstand
Threshold on ranger no pet
Pretty much a free stun breaker if your dying in a Zerg if you have sig of beastmaster

This is a huge buff to melee and mid range signet builds. I will love using this

JonPeters.5630:

Ranger:
We feel like rangers also currently have too much endurance regeneration through traits. Due to this, we’ve made adjustments to Wilderness Survival traits, and we’ve also brought down the passive of Sun Spirit and the active effect for Storm Spirit.

• Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
  .

Let’s see… Primal Reflexes grants vigour when you’re critically hit: meaning, quite obviously, you need to take a hard hit to the face to be able to dodge more? But if you’ve taken a crit already, another will soon follow if you’re low on endurance.
Then we have Beastmastery X, that grants vigour when a pet is activated. It’s not half-bad, but has a radius of 600 units.
Survival IV, vigorous renewal, only activates on an initial healing effect: that is, it doesn’t activate on the pulses of Healing Spring or Troll’s Ungeant.

Total vigour time: 15 seconds. That’s a lot of vigour… but very defensive in nature and you have to be close to your opponent, which rules out the ranged options.

All of these require you to actively pick them, sacrificing useful or perhaps better traits simply for survivability. The 50% endurance regen from the 5 pointer was amazing for freeing up points and creating a strong character that, while not as insanely dodgey as the troll-specc thieves, could still hold its own. So how about instead you address all this vigour (does anyone ever take Primal Reflexes btw?) instead? We have enough trouble outside of bunker builds to survive anyway, seeing as we got crap condi removal, too much reliance on the pet (kill it already!) and very few defensive weapon skills.

TL:DR: ANet:

An interesting read and like the LB changes, but I am still waiting for the pets’ AI to be addressed as well as a way to park them unless called on. Infact when the pet is parked there would be a significant increase in ranger damage etc to compensate for the pet being ‘left in the cage’.

Ranger is always going to have the pet. It’s not going anywhere. If you don’t want that, you should reroll yesterday and not later.

CETheLucid.3964:

Ranger is always going to have the pet. It’s not going anywhere. If you don’t want that, you should reroll yesterday and not later.

In PvE, for me anyway, the pet is only there for the revives. Been a melee ranger since launch and learned the hard way how to survive and if it weren’t for faster revive speed, I would never notice it’s there. Different story in WvW ofc <.<

major vigor regeneration nerf .. few useless buffs (little buff to lb1), seriously 100% stun bonus for what ? gs 5 and sb 5 ? from 1 to 2 second spend 30 points in mostly useless trait line ..
why warrior has LB dmg and range bonus in in 1 trait, skill Cd in second trait .. ? I need 3 master trait to make LB even little effective .. this is another dissapointment ..
still mess in trait lines ..
no even word about bugged LB out of range mess

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

major vigor regeneration nerf .. few useless buffs (little buff to lb1), seriously 100% stun bonus for what ? gs 5 and sb 5 ? from 1 to 2 second spend 30 points in mostly useless trait line ..
why warrior has LB dmg and range bonus in in 1 trait, skill Cd in second trait .. ? I need 3 master trait to make LB even little effective .. this is another dissapointment ..
still mess in trait lines ..
no even word about bugged LB out of range mess

lots of endurance regen nerfs in this balance patch across the board from what I hear and longbow is going to be awesome, you underestimate the impact of the this patch for rangers, its going to be huge for us if they stick with it

Chopps.5047:

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

major vigor regeneration nerf .. few useless buffs (little buff to lb1), seriously 100% stun bonus for what ? gs 5 and sb 5 ? from 1 to 2 second spend 30 points in mostly useless trait line ..
why warrior has LB dmg and range bonus in in 1 trait, skill Cd in second trait .. ? I need 3 master trait to make LB even little effective .. this is another dissapointment ..
still mess in trait lines ..
no even word about bugged LB out of range mess

lots of endurance regen nerfs in this balance patch across the board from what I hear and longbow is going to be awesome, you underestimate the impact of the this patch for rangers, its going to be huge for us if they stick with it

Depends heavily on spec. At min range, the shortbow is still better. At mid range, the longbow pulls ahead but not as much as you think. Max range it has always out done the shortbow. It’s really going to come down to utility (which the shortbow wins out) or if you can rely on staying at max range (which you really can’t).

Atherakhia.4086:

Chopps.5047:

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

major vigor regeneration nerf .. few useless buffs (little buff to lb1), seriously 100% stun bonus for what ? gs 5 and sb 5 ? from 1 to 2 second spend 30 points in mostly useless trait line ..
why warrior has LB dmg and range bonus in in 1 trait, skill Cd in second trait .. ? I need 3 master trait to make LB even little effective .. this is another dissapointment ..
still mess in trait lines ..
no even word about bugged LB out of range mess

lots of endurance regen nerfs in this balance patch across the board from what I hear and longbow is going to be awesome, you underestimate the impact of the this patch for rangers, its going to be huge for us if they stick with it

Depends heavily on spec. At min range, the shortbow is still better. At mid range, the longbow pulls ahead but not as much as you think. Max range it has always out done the shortbow. It’s really going to come down to utility (which the shortbow wins out) or if you can rely on staying at max range (which you really can’t).

I’d argue that LB has more utility… It has vuln, swiftness for pet + stealth, AoE cripple that most people are afraid to stand in, and a KB, AB has a single target (but easier to maintain) cripple, poison, an evade, and a daze/stun.

They’re both good weapons (especially after this upcoming patch!) but for utility if give it to LB, damage however…. That’s SBs domain.

I hope the endurance regen nerf is for pvp only…I mean, yeah in pvp where every ranger runs around with sword and/or dagger they may be dodging and evading too much in anet’s eyes, but in pve where people actually do use other weapons like greatsword or double bows/axes, it is just a senseless nerf in an environment full of one-shot mechanics.

Without sword or dagger equipped you will never have enough endurance to avoid all of Subject Alpha’s AoEs in CoE for example. Vigor when hit trait ain’t gonna help when you’re not supposed to get hit even once, and you shouldn’t waste your heal for vigor on heal. Not to mention the former trait competes with other nice ones such as 30% more crit dmg on pet or might for pet on crit.

It’s not even full vigor(100% endurance regen), it’s half a vigor(50%).

Also I don’t buy the “all classes are getting endurance regeneration nerfed” argument considering there’s nothing in those notes about the 5 point vigor-on-crit trait mesmers and guardians have.

Copied from the general.

Ranger: #1 issue with ranger is condition removal. You need to fix way it works, it relies on pet that can either be dead or too far away to actually remove any conditions. Only other option is a stand still heal skill. These are all death sentences in current condition fest you got going on. Until condition spam gets toned down you need to give ranger a reliable way to remove conditions and more options. Nerfing Natural Vigor will only make things way worst as currently it is only thing keeping rangers alive in WvW.

Ranger is worst class in game due to the whole pet system. One suggestion to help was make pets dodge when you dodge. I personally really want option to totally disable pet and get some form of DPS compensation. In b4 play another class replies.

I think it’s Anet’s strange way of saying “Use Vigorous Training.”

But really, I just don’t get it. Rangers being capable of dodging frequently is kind of a profession mechanic for us. This is like the whole Zephyr’s Speed change all over again. While I feel uncomfortable with it, I guess it’ll incentivise players to invest some points in Beastmastery for AoE vigor.

DiamondMeteor.8345:

I think it’s Anet’s strange way of saying “Use Vigorous Training.”

But really, I just don’t get it. Rangers being capable of dodging frequently is kind of a profession mechanic for us. This is like the whole Zephyr’s Speed change all over again. While I feel uncomfortable with it, I guess it’ll incentivise players to invest some points in Beastmastery for AoE vigor.

Strangely, A-net claims to want more build variety with the Ranger but won’t change the ONLY thing preventing it (Empathetic Bond…)

If the class balance Devs eyes haven’t glazed over by now, I have a suggestion for our Pet AI that would GREATLY enhance their performance in WvW and some boss fights

Where we currently have a toggle choice of Passive (pet does noting, lingers in immediate vicinity of Ranger) and Aggressive (pet changes targets to follow the target of our attack unless commanded otherwise with f1) I would like to put a third mode into the rotation: Ward.

Ward: Pet remains at your side until you attack or you or the pet are attacked (the same trigger conditions as aggressive). It then attacks the red nameplate closest to you within a maximum range of your current weapon(s) [or a fixed value of 1,000 if this is not possible with current technology]. After each action/attack, it again checks for the closest enemy/red nampeplate to you and focuses its attack on that target. This behavior is overridden by a direct command to focus target via f1 until the focus target is dead or beyond pet leash range from the ranger.

Essentially the pet focuses on harassing and repelling enemies closest to you, working outwards, allowing you to attack enemies at range without your pet immediately launching itself deep into enemy territory. This logic would allow better pet behavior in complex multi-target boss fights and be an enormous boon to managing your pet in zerg vs. zerg encounters making the pet more likely to join the line and switch intuitively to dedicated bodyguard action when opponents break through.

To keep up with the current blue & red color coding for passive/aggressive I would give ward a yellow or black/yellow (hazard warning colors) icon.

Nike.2631:

If the class balance Devs eyes haven’t glazed over by now, I have a suggestion for our Pet AI that would GREATLY enhance their performance in WvW and some boss fights

Where we currently have a toggle choice of Passive (pet does noting, lingers in immediate vicinity of Ranger) and Aggressive (pet changes targets to follow the target of our attack unless commanded otherwise with f1) I would like to put a third mode into the rotation: Ward.

Ward: Pet remains at your side until you attack or you or the pet are attacked (the same trigger conditions as aggressive). It then attacks the red nameplate closest to you within a maximum range of your current weapon(s) [or a fixed value of 1,000 if this is not possible with current technology]. After each action/attack, it against checks for the closest enemy/red nampeplate to you and focuses its attack on that target. This behavior is overridden by a direct command to focus target via f1 until the focus target is dead or beyond pet leash range from the ranger.

Essentially the pet focuses on harassing and repelling enemies closest to you, working outwards, allowing you to attack enemies at range without your pet immediately launching itself deep into enemy territory. This logic would allow better pet behavior in complex multi-target boss fights and be an enormous boon to managing your pet in zerg vs. zerg encounters making the pet is more likely to join the line and switch intuitively to dedicated bodyguard action when opponents break through.

To keep up with the current blue & red color coding for passive/aggressive I would give ward a yellow or black/yellow (hazard warning colors) icon.

It’s a good idea but I feel like the pet would get overwhelmed with enemies. He’d constantly be transitioning from targets and even with a speed boost he’d waste several valuable seconds of dps.

I really like that idea, Nike.

Soilder.3607:

It’s a good idea but I feel like the pet would get overwhelmed with enemies. He’d constantly be transitioning from targets and even with a speed boost he’d waste several valuable seconds of dps.

The pet is always looking for what’s closest to you – if two enemies share range enough to make the pet ‘jitter’ between them they’re almost certainly both in melee with the ranger and the pet is likely to be in range of both of them anyways – and it splitting its attacks amongst them isn’t the worst thing, as that would give it a chance to pull both NPCs off you – pretty much the purpose of ‘warding’. If it’s switching targets because something is chasing you, then it’s absolutely working as intend. Envision a moving battle, something gets close to you, your hound pounces it, and rather than screw around with that enemy, it selects another enemy that was more successful in keeping pace with you. Basically its targeting not based on helping you with your target, but engaging and thwarting whichever enemy is most likely to threaten you with melee attacks.

Nike.2631:

Soilder.3607:

It’s a good idea but I feel like the pet would get overwhelmed with enemies. He’d constantly be transitioning from targets and even with a speed boost he’d waste several valuable seconds of dps.

The pet is always looking for what’s closest to you – if two enemies share range enough to make the pet ‘jitter’ between them they’re almost certainly both in melee with the ranger and the pet is likely to be in range of both of them anyways – and it splitting its attacks amongst them isn’t the worst thing, as that would give it a chance to pull both NPCs off you – pretty much the purpose of ‘warding’. If it’s switching targets because something is chasing you, then it’s absolutely working as intend. Envision a moving battle, something gets close to you, your hound pounces it, and rather than screw around with that enemy, it selects another enemy that was more successful in keeping pace with you. Basically its targeting not based on helping you with your target, but engaging and thwarting whichever enemy is most likely to threaten you with melee attacks.

I get what you’re saying mate, but I think for this to work as you envision it to would require the pet to be much faster than it currently is. Maybe for pve this could be good because monsters are slow, but even then I feel as if the pet would take too much time targeting new enemies. And what if your pet is chilled or crippled? Then that’d certainly reduce him to a crawl.

I hope the Natural Vigor change gets nixed. Aside from encouraging bunkering, it makes the game less fun to play. Anything that reduces the number of actions my character can take in a period of time makes the game play slow. The ranger used to be a lot of fun with its emphasis on quick action. Between having already ruined the short bow as a primary weapon and adding this endurance change, it will feel like some kind of minion master or support caster that sits in one place and presses a button every couple seconds.

First ranger patch i’m looking forward too! I see hope. More importantly my build now has 3 important traits in the NM section then 2 love the greatsword buff xD

Over all a decent patch from what I see. I don’t like the nerf to endurance, but it’s not THAT bad as I don’t pvp. I don’t like it’s going to slow down my play by 25%. I’m hoping the next big ranger patch address the core problem with the class and that’s the pets. I love the ranger, which is why depsite rolling on my other toons now as much or more than my ranger now I still come back to the ranger forum the most, and I want to enjoy it more but I just can’t as long as that pet is there. Of course, I can just keep it on passive most of the time (which I do) and use jungle stalker/red moa for the F2 actives… Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what I do.

One day, when pets are optional, ranger will be my main again… If not, oh well.

Nike.2631:

Where we currently have a toggle choice of Passive (pet does noting, lingers in immediate vicinity of Ranger) and Aggressive (pet changes targets to follow the target of our attack unless commanded otherwise with f1) I would like to put a third mode into the rotation: Ward.

Ward: Pet remains at your side until you attack or you or the pet are attacked (the same trigger conditions as aggressive). It then attacks the red nameplate closest to you within a maximum range of your current weapon(s) [or a fixed value of 1,000 if this is not possible with current technology]. After each action/attack, it again checks for the closest enemy/red nampeplate to you and focuses its attack on that target. This behavior is overridden by a direct command to focus target via f1 until the focus target is dead or beyond pet leash range from the ranger.

That’s a bit close to the guard skill, and I expect Anet would tell you to just use guard.

But you touch on something that’s really confused me about the pet system in GW2. If the pet is going to attack anything I attack, why do I even need F1 as an explicit attack command? If I command the pet to attack a target with F1, it should attack that target until it or the target is dead, or I give it a new F1 target. It should not switch to attacking my target the moment I attack (unless it currently has no target). If I want it to switch to attacking what I’m attacking, I can just hit F1 again.

In every other game I’ve played with a pet class, you can command your pet to attack one target, while you attack another. This gives the pet class a distinct advantage in that you can essentially harass/tank two targets at once, which is kinda the whole point of having a pet. Your damage is spread across two bodies, but having two bodies gives you more flexibility in how you attack. But not in this game – your pet always attacks what you attack, and thus becomes relegated to nothing more than extra DPS.

I’ve simulated this functionality (and essentially what you’re proposing with Ward) while using the greatsword. I target a boss and sic the pet on it. The pet ties up the boss and keeps it from charging at me. Meanwhile I use the movement keys and AOE nature of greatsword’s attacks to clean up the trash mobs around me, always keeping the boss targeted so the pet will continue to attack it. It works, but it’s clumsy, and I shouldn’t have to manipulate the game mechanics this way simply to get the pet to attack a different target from mine.

“Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.”

I’m not too thrilled about this change. I like to run a close combat power roaming build for WvW and this change will definitely hurt my build. Also its a large decrease too.. If they do decrease it, is it really necessary to decrease by so much?

Stamina regen has already been nerfed pretty hard when they made it so healing spring doesn’t give stamina with every tick so I don’t see why we would need more nerfs in regards to stamina regen.

Sorry haven’t read all of the notes yet so maybe there is a good reason for this nerf.

@ all those people hoping to get rid of the pet entirely:
Look no further, there’s a simple solution. Roll a warrior, pick longbow, select the Stronger Bowstring trait et voila, there you go, your own personal archer without a pet. It’s really that easy. ArenaNet stated countless times that the Ranger is primarily a pet class. Time to believe it, guys.

Natural Vigor:
This change is going to hit me hard as well, but I can understand that it was a bit strong for a 5 point minor trait. At the moment, it’s kinda mandatory in next to every Ranger build, which indeed is not a good sign. However it might be an idea to move Vigorous Training to the Adept tier, so that people who aren’t interested in the Beastmastery line don’t have to invest 20 points just to gain some more vigor.

Beastmastery Master Traits:
Like Vigorous Training, the remaining 3 master traits should be independent of pet families. You’d have to slightly alter the traits to make ‘em usable by every pet, but in my opinion their current state is way too restrictive and I usually don’t pick them. I mean Intimidation Training is nice and all, but it kinda forces me to pick canine and spider. Now, what if I want to run canine and devourer or feline and spider?

Fortifying Bond:
This trait shares vigor with the pet, even though the pet has no means of dodging and probably no endurance pool. Remove vigor from the functionality of Fortifying Bond and add stability instead, which is currently lacking and would be a boon I’d be interested in sharing with my pet.

Bark Skin:
How about a damage reduction kicking in at 50% health, rather than 25%? Reduction percentage number could be tweaked (30%?), but I believe that a reduction below 50% health would be stronger than a reduction below 25% and thus could compete with Empathic Bond.

Sic ’Em:
Please fix this skill. Don’t know why it didn’t happen with the last update. This skill’s effect gets cancled by activating F2, F3 and signet pet commands, which makes this skill a no-go.

Oakheart Salve:
Include Torment to trigger this trait, since it’s a degeneration condition as well. Increase the regneration duration to 7 seconds. This way you could spec 20 WS for Oakheart salve and 10 NM for Nature’s Bounty and have a nice synergy right there to counter some degeneration. Somehwat reminds me of Melandru’s Resilience from GW1.

just one thing, the Sword Auto-Attack
I’d really love to hear wether this is intentional or not.
For Damage Sword is the best option, but it also has the only AA ingame that makes it harder to evade.
Sure, we have 2 evade on the Sword, but timing them is a lot harder than just dodging (because of casttimes and aftercast).
The other changes look pretty good so far

Girion.5483:

@ all those people hoping to get rid of the pet entirely:
Look no further, there’s a simple solution. Roll a warrior, pick longbow, select the Stronger Bowstring trait et voila, there you go, your own personal archer without a pet. It’s really that easy. ArenaNet stated countless times that the Ranger is primarily a pet class. Time to believe it, guys.

Uh, no. You can accept the shaft in unpleasent places but I’m not. I’ve got a warrior. It’s just not as fun as a Ranger. The Ranger feels like an archer in ways the Warrior can’t replicate. The Ranger is fun to play in ways the Warrior is not. Had you done what you suggest you would know this. Anyone who rolls both knows this. If I recall the Ranger in GW1 was “primarily pet” class but the pet was still optional. There is NOTHING stopping them from doing that in GW2. I whole heartily believe it is beyond their technical capabilities to program the pet AI to react the way it needs to, to make it worth a flip in any given situation. Simply put: if they could do it they would have already. They’ve been doing this for better part of a decade. If they could they would have already. You can blow all the smoke you want but that doesn’t change the fact pets lack dodging and that’s bad in a game built on damage mitigation through dodging. If anything they should do what they did in GW1 and bring in preparations as an option to pets. I wouldn’t care if I had to delete my Ranger and re-roll to get preps (as I would lose my infinit axe, pick, sycle) but it would be worth it… and I imagine at least half of the Rangers out there would do the same thing.

So, you can sit back and take it like a quiet lassy but I’m not. I’m going to complain until the make the class I love playing and make it great.

At first, sry for my bad english usually im only reading here.

Pls add more dmg to Greatsword AA 3. If u want “max dps” u have to interrupt the AA as often as u can (with 2 and even 3)….that doesn´t feel well. GS dmg is still about 15% lower then Sword.
So u can add dmg here, would be rly awesome.

To the longbow. I wrote my opinion here.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Is-WvW-Longbow-viable-after-12-10-changes/first#post3142476
If some1 of your team can speak/read german. The longer and better written Version is in the german Rangerforum.

At least a flat AoE dmg reduction for Pets in dungeons would be good. A lot of Bosses have “1hit” attacks that kill Pets and are not avoidable for them. For example last Boss in SE P1. Cats and Birds are nessecary for good DPS. With a Bear a ranger can´t do good dmg.

Would be rly nice if u change LB and GS to make both more viable! Thanks for reading.
Friendly greetings from germany.

for Barkskin, wilderness survival, grandmaster major trait, I would propose instead of 50% damage reduction below 25% health, changing it to 33% damage reduction to below 50% health, that would make it more competable to Empathic Bond.
If you feel and tests shows that is too strong, id suggest making it apply protection boon for x seconds, every x seconds when you are under 50% health threshold, as boons can be striped, stolen or even converted to conditions.

I would really like to get everyones oppinion on that.

For those who did not saw it, warrior’s crack shot will be moved to adept trait while we still need to spend 40 points in 2 differents trees to get similar bonus…

Weird Way to promote ranger’s power build ^^

Changes mean nothing too me I still won’t come back…

FIX the shortbow

that you guys broke.

Undertaker.7451:

for Barkskin, wilderness survival, grandmaster major trait, I would propose instead of 50% damage reduction below 25% health, changing it to 33% damage reduction to below 50% health, that would make it more competable to Empathic Bond.
If you feel and tests shows that is too strong, id suggest making it apply protection boon for x seconds, every x seconds when you are under 50% health threshold, as boons can be striped, stolen or even converted to conditions.

I would really like to get everyones oppinion on that.

You clearly don’t use Barkskin, so stop trying to nerf it!! That reduction in damage STACKS with frost aura and prot btw. This trait has saved my balls (and my pet) waaaaaaaaaaay more than empathetic bond, it normally buys me those precious extra seconds needed in order to get off my heal again and put me back into the fight.

If they made it a protection pulse…. That would be HORRIBLE, would I like the health region to be larger? Yeah, that’d be awesome! But I’d much rather take 50% less damage under 25% health than a measily 33% under 50%

The Biggest change Anet can do right now is removing bloody Signet of the Beastmaster and making that baseline.

Absolutely silly we have to invest 30 points in a line to get the same effect as everyone else.

Durzlla.6295:

Undertaker.7451:

for Barkskin, wilderness survival, grandmaster major trait, I would propose instead of 50% damage reduction below 25% health, changing it to 33% damage reduction to below 50% health, that would make it more competable to Empathic Bond.
If you feel and tests shows that is too strong, id suggest making it apply protection boon for x seconds, every x seconds when you are under 50% health threshold, as boons can be striped, stolen or even converted to conditions.

I would really like to get everyones oppinion on that.

You clearly don’t use Barkskin, so stop trying to nerf it!! That reduction in damage STACKS with frost aura and prot btw. This trait has saved my balls (and my pet) waaaaaaaaaaay more than empathetic bond, it normally buys me those precious extra seconds needed in order to get off my heal again and put me back into the fight.

If they made it a protection pulse…. That would be HORRIBLE, would I like the health region to be larger? Yeah, that’d be awesome! But I’d much rather take 50% less damage under 25% health than a measily 33% under 50%

How are you handling Conditions right on now Durzlla, i know you talked about Barkskin and Frost Trap before.

Xsorus.2507:

The Biggest change Anet can do right now is removing bloody Signet of the Beastmaster and making that baseline.

Absolutely silly we have to invest 30 points in a line to get the same effect as everyone else.

+1

some changes are good, others are meeh but overall i consider this another huge nerf to an already weak class. Why? because as a ranger we rely on dodging, yes apparently they are nerfing vigor regen on all classes but like the nerf to quickness some months back it affect this class more than any other probably so yet again we are getting hit with the nerf bad and hugely.

I wouldnt change all the fixes and “buffs” in this coming patch for the 25% in endurance regen, is just too important.

thefantasticg.3984:

-snip-

Ranger. Is. The. Pet. Class. That will not change.

You shouldn’t play a class hoping that they’ll change a core mechanic about it. That’s stupid.

That’s like me playing thief, hoping they remove stealth from the class. Or a mesmer, hoping they remove clones from the class.

If you hate the pet so much, you really should reroll a class you can better tolerate. I’m not being a kitten, I sincerely mean that. Your gaming experience will be a lot better.
_

I really like my pet.

I’ve always liked the pet classes in other games, pets are awesome. The pets you can tame in GW2 are amazing and unique critters, the variety is incredible.

Best I’ve ever seen in a game. The F2 mechanics and the different rolls they can play, the different stats for the different species have endless potential.

I switch my pets around often, either on a whim, compliment my current build, or because I think a particular pet is effective for the current thing I’m doing.

It’s all good up until the AI… the AI is bad. Terrible. It’s barely tolerable on a good day, and just tripe and rage inducing on others.

Some days I can make my pet attack one target while I handle the other… and other days, when I tell it to attack one target and I take another, it inexplicably stops attacking the target I told it to attack and comes back to mine.

To be fair, when this happens, I had probably accidentally pressed it’s F2.
_

Some background/pet quirkiness:

If you have your pet attack a target different from yours with F1, if you use F2, the pet will use it’s F2 on the target that you are attacking.

Not the one you originally told it to attack with F1.

Ironically enough, if you tell your pet to begin the attack on an enemy with it’s F2, it will attack with it’s F2.

But if you the ranger select a different target from the one you told your pet to use it’s F2 on…

It’ll stop attacking the target you selected for it, and attack the enemy you are attacking. However, if you select a target for your pet with F1, and you do not use your F2…

You can select a different target from the one your pet is attacking and your pet will continue to attack the target you selected for it until it’s dead (the target or the pet) or you call it back/swap it leaving you the ranger free to change your targets around while your pet focuses on the one you wanted it to attack with F1.

Now if you’re still with me, congratulations. You’re probably a decent ranger.
_

Dear Anet, please take note of the above. The above situation with how the pet AI works is crazy.

It’s confusing, non-intuitive, and something you “learn” through a lot of trial and error.

If we can’t get a comprehensive pet AI redo anytime soon, would it be too much to ask that the current system be streamlined, tweaked to be more consistent and less… crazy?
_

Proposed Hot Fix:

Let F2 skills “lock” a pets target like F1 does. The ranger can use their pets F2 on one enemy, and they themselves can attack another like how F1 works.

An additional function to using F2 to target with the pet would be to let it automatically use it’s F2 on recharge (F2 attack always has priority) on the selected target, that way you don’t change targets by pressing F2 (like how it works now).

It would fire off on the selected enemy automatically, until you called it back with F3 or pressed F1.

Using F1 works like it does now, and would double as a way to “turn off” the auto F2 attack.

Using F1 simply locks the pet to your selected target and does not activate this “auto F2” function that using F2 to target an attack would do.

Not pushing anything just works like it does now, attack what I’m attacking, attack what attacks us behavior… until you do push one of the pet commands.

Using F2 later in the fight simply works like it does now, it activates and your pet then “locks” your current target.

Pressing F1 locks the pet on a target like it does now, and does not commit the F2 attack to an auto sequence.

Pressing F1 or F3 breaks/turns off the “auto F2” function. As would swapping obviously.

This is good for non-offensive and utility based F2’s, though they could also be used in the auto F2 way.

Something like this works within the current framework of the current pet system and would be a godsend for rangers in terms of pet management.
_

Also, Nike’s idea is awesome and something that should be considered in the event of a total pet AI redo.

Thank you players, devs, haters, for reading if you read. Appreciate the time. Sorry it got a little long.

Ision.3207:

Xsorus.2507:

The Biggest change Anet can do right now is removing bloody Signet of the Beastmaster and making that baseline.

Absolutely silly we have to invest 30 points in a line to get the same effect as everyone else.

+1

+1